Theory predicts that if light from a distant quasar passes by a galaxy or through the mass of a cluster of galaxies that then the light from the quasar will either be spread out into a halo around that object or else the quasar might appear double or even triple. Liliya Rodrigues-Williams and Craig J. Hogan of the University of Washington in Seattle have compared quasar counts in the vicinity of known clusters of galaxies and compared the count with that of empty regions. Instead of the predicted excess of 1%, they discovered a 70% excess. The authors conclude that either clusters have larger halos than expected (which originally amounted to 6 times the mass of the visible cluster), or that we “don't fully understand” gravitational lensing. Another possibility which I'll throw into the ring, maybe quasars are not as distant as believed, and they tend to occur in clusters of galaxies.

M15 and the Blue Stars

Astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the globular (spherical) cluster M15 in Hercules. Lo, and behold, there is a new, unexpected class of blue stars in the cluster. Now blue stars are typically thought to be young (tens of millions of years at most) and globular clusters are thought to be old (10 billion years or so), so one would not expect young stars to be present in such a region. Yet here are these blue stars. The proposal? The stars are sun-like which are much older than the sun (by about 5 billion years) and show us the eventual fate of the sun. In this scenario, sun-like stars eventually expand in size to fill a region of space somewhat greater than the earth-sun distance. Since there are so many stars in a globular cluster, encounters between the stars are thought to have torn the “red” atmospheres away from these stars leaving the hot, “blue” cores behind. It will take repairs to the Hubble telescope before spectrograms can be taken of the 15 stars which spectrograms will reveal if the stars really are young, or if they have been stripped of their outer layers.

As If That Were Not Enough

Stars are supposed to be born only in dense, dusty, cloudy regions near the plane of the galaxy. Where there is no dust and little gas, there should not be any young (blue) stars. But the August 20, 1993 Astrophysical Journal Letters reports the discovery of a baby star some 77,000 to 155,000 (most likely value 90,000) light years from the center of the Milky Way. That's about three times as far out as the sun. The star lies 25,000 light years beyond the edge of the galaxy's spiral arms, where stars are believed to be born. Although such young stars (less than 1,000,000 years old) have been observed on the outskirts of the Magellanic Clouds, this is the first to be found for the Milky Way. Needless to say, there is no ready evolutionary explanation for the star's presence; but an invisible molecular cloud is suspected. The star will, of course, help stimulate scientists to develop a theory of star formation in areas devoid of heavy elements and dust.

Intelligent Chaos

Researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park, are using chaotic circuits to transmit information. In short, there is order in chaos. This observation gives great comfort to those who adhere to the old Babylonian idea that the god, Chaos, created the universe (by a chaotic big bang!) But don't be down-in-the-mouth about it, because it means that there is an intelligent creator who manages the universe (see books by Wilder-Smith, for example).

What is interesting, and possibly significant, about these chaotic circuits is that they show a certain coherence which may, possibly, account for many if not all of the “magnetic reversals” which evolutionists love to use against creationists. All it would take is to phase-lock the electron paths along lines of a electro-magnetic field or, possibly, along the axis of a crystal lattice. The circuits are also reminiscent of the radio lobes seen in radio galaxies and QSRs.